Talk:KQ8 development
So I was reading a bit in some book, All Your Base Are Belong To Us: How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg, that claims that the "failure" or problems in "KQ8" had more to do with Phantasmagoria than anything! Apparently, they claim that Davidson and Associates took over Sierra, and the owners were crazy fundamentalist conservative Christians, who thought Phantasmagoria was immoral going to destroy the nation's youth, turn them into murderers or what not... So they apparently had little trust for Williams, thinking they were trying to corrupt the masses, and destroy the Christian Nation™! They didn't like the violence in the game apparently. They apparently stopped marketing Phantasmagoria (while it was still going strongly). Roberta believed it would have sold alot more if they hadn't meddled into the game. The Davidsons worried that Roberta was trying to insert her own 'corruptive' influence into Mask of Eternity as well due to what was included in Phantasmagoria. So apparently, as this theory goes, that the Davidsons (Jan and her husband) were designing their own 'clean' version of what they believed KQ8 should be (one can guess a game that cut out most of the violence), and Roberta was designing her own version of what KQ8 was supposed to be. They kept on sending her their 'suggestions, and orders' and what she needed to change to make it suitable for the public consumption to prevent it from influencing the public (some kind of censorship apparently)... The book states "Roberta" was angry, because she didn't like Davidson telling her how to write her own story! So it claims that two development teams were working on script and puzzles at the same time. Roberta worked on her version, and another team (at Davidson and Associates) worked on theirs! When it came down to it, she started to feel like no one was listening to her (the Suits weren't and were trying to design a second version of the game on their own outside of Roberta's influence)! Now one has to ask if this is true, what was going to be in KQ8 that would have been so anti-Christian that fundamentalist Christians would skwak? What direction was the series going? Was it even more violent? Was there alot more Christian and Demonic imagery intended to be put into the game than what made it in the final release? Would it have been something that would have pushed away King's Quest fans even more? ...or would the mythological and christian motifs have been much deeper, and drawn fans in even more? ..or would the fans have preferred the Davidson version of the game?Baggins 15:55, August 28, 2011 (UTC) Removed section I've taken the liberty to remove this section, as it is a bit outdated with regards to new information concerning the behind the scenes involvement of Davidsons and there attempt to make there own version of KQ8 without Roberta's concent. It seems obvious that Roberta was very much in control of her own team. But she was worried that the other team would usurp control, and advertise their own, with her name on it. It wasn't her game, and she didn't want to be associated with it. In the meantime she continued to work on her own version of the game, as the one she wanted to release. At the same time she was also having trouble with the Team at Dynamix, who were behind schedule with the replacement game engine (she was stuck using one of the more outdated versions of the 3Space engine). So while Roberta may have had little or limited control over KQ1 remake, KQ6, and KQ7, she still had more control, than having to deal with a competive product out there, that may have been released in place of her own.Baggins 20:31, August 28, 2011 (UTC) Comparisons to other King's Quest game development There are some interesting similarities involving the development of this game and some of other games in the series. One aspect of this game is that other than writing the game's dialogue, being involved in the design process, and involved voice casting/voice directing, and manual, and fairy in control in the version. Its interesting to note that similarly KQ1 SCI was apparently mainly the product of Josh Mandel's influence as he was not only the producer for the game, he was the one who rewrote and expanded the script. At the time Roberta was too busy making King's Quest V to finish the game herself. Josh says Roberta played his finished game, and had asked that he remove a humorous ending he had inserted into to the game which she felt was inappropriate, see The Royal Scribe. It's also said that in the case of KQ6, that although Roberta and Jane Jensen are listed as the writers in the credits, Jane Jensen is listed as having being the one behind the "Text & Diologue"--she apparently did most of the writing for that story--Roberta was not even able to recall that the Black Cloak Society had made it into the released version of the game; She only recalled the idea coming up briefly during the early phase of KQ6's development. Roberta herself even admitted that she had less influence on KQ6, and it did not fit her own style since she had no involvement in writing the story, and that Jane Jensen had a completely different style than her. "And I am planning to design and write VII myself so it should have more of my own style. I’ll try to make it brighter and in the tradition of King’s Quest IV.", "Jane has a different style than I do, and maybe she is more text oriented." The Official Book of King's Quest VI, pg Apparently Jane had written much of the game's text while Roberta was gone for two months on vacation. There are also comments from Lorelei Shannon that suggests she did most of the dialogue and development for KQ7, as Roberta was busy working on Phantasmagoria at the time (In fact, Roberta is in the end credits of the game not listed as the writer of the game--The game is listed as being written solely by Shannon, and that the game is ''based on characters created by Roberta Williams.") Roberta's name also comes third on the list of directors in the game booklet, with Shannon and Andy Hoyos ahead of her, and her name comes second behind Shannon's as "Designer" in the same booklet, again suggesting that KQ7 was more a Lorelei Shannon game. So there has been debate on how much influence Roberta actually had on those games as well. Weapons and NPCS Listening through the sound files it appears there are some sounds where characters tell you to put weapons away. However in the game, this is not required, as connor will automatically put weapons away. Thus there is no way to hear these comments in the game as far as I know?Baggins 18:56, May 31, 2012 (UTC)